Occidental Petroleum is investing in billion-dollar projects to suck carbon dioxide out of the sky. The effort is raising hopes — and eyebrows
By Daniel Estrin, Camila Domonoske
3-Minute Listen / Transcript available
Occidental Petroleum is investing in billion-dollar projects to suck carbon dioxide out of the sky. The effort is raising hopes — and eyebrows
By Daniel Estrin, Camila Domonoske
3-Minute Listen / Transcript available
What do you do after the lifespan of the tree? Or rather after the growth phase?
Tree drops seeds on its own.
Trees burn in wildfires, decompose and there isn’t infinite space for it. You need to take carbon out of the game to make a difference. Trees aren’t exactly perfect for that.
Old growth forests naturally sequester carbon despite bushfires. New growth takes a long time to get there without additional steps but the later you start the longer it’s going to take.
Nope thats not how it works its a circle of Carbon unless we humans add it by burning literal carbon we have from the ground (coal) we need to put it back.
What is coal? It’s literally dead plant matter that didn’t decay in anaerobic environments and that’s what swamps are.
While I agree that artificial carbon capture should be researched, as others already said: it has little practical use until all electricity production comes from renewable sources.
There are better and more efficient ideas than Industrial Plants needing energy, for example a system using some sort of Alge, wich grows fast, and is easy to store forever when dry.
Wait, you’re making a big fuss over the type of natural photosynthesis we should use? Seriously?
People commenting against the carbon capture as featured in the article argue about using natural ways instead and “tree” is just a shorthand for some, just as I used the broad term “plants”.
Now don’t come and start splitting hairs like “But actually, algae are different from plants because the cells that comprise algae are not able to differentiate into different plant parts like stems, roots, and leaves, so I’m arguing for something completely different.”
Most plants aren’t suitable for permanent reduction of Carbon we would need way to much area, alge is however very efficient, some also want to use bacteria, but that may be risky.
And yes, trees are important, but not the best (or if we are honest, Meaningful) way to solve the carbon problem.
Another option would be to make lots of alcohol from plants and store it somewhere permanently. (ethanol is just a very compact carbohydrate)
And further there might be industrial ways to take out carbon on mass permanently, we are just not yet shure.
Anyway, the first priority should be to reduce released of more carbon into the atmosphere.
Of course there’s enough space to capture CO2 from decomposed trees. It’s called soil.
Are you afraid of a Himalaya of soil or what?
Removed by mod
Let the tree become part of earth.